Rabat – In a newly issued ranking, Morocco came in eighth place on a list of the top 10 least cyber secure worldwide destinations for digital nomads.
According to data from Rebootonline, a market research company, Morocco scores 73 out of 100 in terms of cybersecurity danger for digital nomads, ranking Moroccan websites as unsafe for individuals who work remotely across continents.
Morocco has a 19 monthly average of driver-by-download pages, a cybersecurity threat where malicious programs are installed on a computer without the user’s consent.
The country also has a high rate of phishing sites, websites similar in name and appearance to other websites, designed to harvest users’ data in breach of cyber privacy laws.
In terms of phishing sites, Morocco’s cyber landscape held 500 between 2018 and 2022, according to Rebootonline data reported by multiple sources.
The internet in Morocco is equally vulnerable to a high number of malware-hosting websites, where users could potentially download malicious software or trojan viruses that are presented as legitimate files.
Malware-hosting websites averaged 1,000 in Morocco between 2018 and 2022, Rebootonline data suggests.
Over the same period, the North African country was home to over 1,600 compromised computers, the source specifies.
Rebootonline’s data is in line with earlier research that pointed out Morocco’s significant exposure to cybersecurity threats.
Research indicates that Morocco was among the top five countries around the world where internet users are more likely to suffer from malware attacks in 2020. Almost 23% of Moroccan mobile users experienced a malware attack in the same year.
The alarming report further suggests that Moroccans are especially little concerned with cybersecurity, as only 8% in a survey said that they use antivirus software.
Cyberattacks, cyberwarfare, or cyber-terrorism are emerging as a new imminent global threat. In 2020, the World Bank ranked cyberattacks as the fifth biggest threat facing the modern world.
Over the past two years, the spread of COVID-19 revolutionized internet penetration rates and the global digital transition, creating the perfect storm for cyberwarfare.
As companies were forced to move to digitization overnight, cyberattacks grew by 600% across the world during the pandemic, according to data from data firm Purplesec.
Read Also: Cybersecurity During the Pandemic, Morocco in Top 5 Most Afflicted
